Thanks again for the above.

Further relevant quote from GC:

Having read the entire "Beta Class Balance Analysis" thread on the US forums now, I can conclude that the information relayed here is all that GC have said up to and including page 25 regarding balance.

I have also noted that many have posted concerns about the trivial balance rotation, weak movement dps, and lack of real eclipse control. There have however so far not been shed any light on this.

With that said, I would appriciate if you could present feedback on the suggestion I made in post #351 regarding starsurge. I know it is not a good idea to get attached to your ideas, and that I have not done any sim (which I might try when I can access my computer) with it. However, I feel the concept is simple and would addres both damage while moving, eclipse control and make the rotation more dynamic and reactive.

I would also like to express my thanks to Tree, for relaying my rotation post.

Some rotation updates: Beta Class Balance Analysis - Forums - World of Warcraft

This might be more complex to think about, not sure when I get into it heavily again. Interesting to see what's coming up though.

High Shooting Stars proc rate, combined with 30% stronger Starsurge seems likely to be a PvP burst issue (although I don't really know how all the Resilience/PvP power stuff is hanging together).

Napkin math for Fae Empowerment:
Suppose, Nukes during Solar->Lunar becomes (with SotF)
- Solar->SS*2+Wr*4
- PreLunar->SS+Wr*4
and also suppose that Eclipse is +70% and SS damage = 1.6 Wrath damage.
Without FF, this does Wr*((2*1.6+4)*1.7 + 1.6*4) = Wr*18.64 damage in 14 GCD's (assuming two SS were instant) for average DPS of 1.331 Wr/GCD.

Add a FF during Solar and you get one more GCD and about 3*.2*1.7=1.02 more Wr damage. Your DPS seems to drop by 2%.

During Incarnation, and/or a Dream of Cenarious proc it probably becomes a DPS gain, but I don't see it otherwise. Note I'm ignoring the lower NG uptime (and lower Starfall contribution) caused by the longer rotation. Will do the SF numbers later.

Edit: I missed the fact pointed out by Tuscarra (and another by PM) that FE gives both buffs, so one FF cast can help both SF and Wr.

Well-timed FF may be a 1-2% increase on the core of a Patchwerk rotation. However, that FF cast was largely a waste if you have too many Euphoria and/or Shooting Stars procs, or, alternatively, if you have to move for ~0.5s or more. It is a bit of a trap spell, because if it is not well-timed, it is going to be a DPS loss. A few more seconds duration would take away the "trap" aspect.

Being that strong on Patchwerk does mean that it is usually going to be a pretty good spell to cast during movement or shortly before burst phases.

Note that our pre-pull setup now includes Astral Communion, FF (critter, or non-instance duel), and, if you have DoC, Healing Touch.

I had some posts with numbers on proc rates on the official moonkin feedback thread that just capped about this, i even suggested pushing it the proc rate to 50% about 6 weeks ago, but I think the following changes conspired to give us lot lower SS proc rate than was initially planned:
1. Removal of IS immediately cut our SS proc chance severely
2. When Beta first launched our DoTs were 18 seconds long and we had quite a bit of Double DoT uptime. They changed that to 12 seconds and so again, significantly reduced our SS Proc Chance.
3. What looks like, someone can tell me if I'm wrong about this, the INT->Crit nerf and the loss of the 8% spell crit debuff mean that we're going to be at a lot lower crit levels, at least early on.

I think Bumping to 50% proc on DoT crit still doesn't push us above Cata SS proc levels, probably not for the first two tiers of raiding.

We better have good burst with our, let's say, total inability to cast Starfire steadily in PvP. There's a reason why moonkins have been historically neglected in arenas, and that's because their damage is easy to shut down, especially when you train them.

And it's still pretty easy to train a balance druid, you just got a lesser disengage. The rest is the same -- no ice block, no disarms, no dispersion.

Even if it's nice to have more SS procs, making it too good to the point that they need to nerf everything else would

• make the balance druids deal even lower damages while not in eclipse
• make us feel gimped in fights where we can't apply moonfire on more than one target
• reduce even more our "burst" in fights like Spine of DW Heroic because the moment we leave the eclipse our nuke's damages fall to abysmal levels
• it would not be a problem if the low damages would be balanced by more SS procs...but in fights where you need burst, those procs must be off the GCD. We already have to wait for the actual Starsurge to land before we can cast an instant one, having to wait the gcd every time it proc, in a target dummy fight where there's low movement it's like having 1.5 sec cast all the time becase we can't instantly continue to cast Wrath/Starfire (removing the feeling of the instant proc)
• make our pvp strategy even more reliant on moonfire spam because our nukes except starsurge would suck

In my humble opinion what we need the most for SS is to remove SS procs from the GCD to allow us a quick cast recovery when we decide to use an instant cast spell, otherwise the only benefit is that you can cast it while moving and nothing more and the chances to get a proc when you move and you are not 1 spell away from eclipse (making hit a lot less) are not that high in a pve fight.

This is some feed back I sent in. I'm posting it here as well to see what you guys think. I'm concerned about the 15 sec duration of Fae Empowerment.

To maximize Fae Empowerment the player will want to cast FF 3 spells before the he triggers the next eclipse. Then hopefully get three buffed Wraths and three buffed Starfires along with all of the other normal parts of the rotation including DoTs, Starsurge, and Starfire. Given the 15 second duration, I don't think that is realistically possible even at a high gear level without temporary buffs like Bloodlust. Take a look at these tables.

Haste Level 2825

	W to SF	SF to W
W*3	4.683	4.071
SF*3	5.496	6.321
Instant SS	1.018	1.018
FF	1.17	1.17
DoT	1.018	1.018
Sfall		1.018
Totals	13.385	14.616

Haste Level 1412

	W to SF	SF to W
W*3	5.148	4.476
SF*3	6.042	6.948
Instant SS	1.119	1.119
FF	1.287	1.287
DoT	1.119	1.119
Sfall		1.119
Totals	14.715	16.068

Haste Level 941

	W to SF	SF to W
W*3	5.322	4.629
SF*3	6.249	7.185
Instant SS	1.157	1.157
FF	1.331	1.331
DoT	1.157	1.157
Sfall		1.157
Totals	15.216	16.616

I used level 85 haste levels to do the calculations and the high haste level is what I currently have in game. The two lower amounts are just lowering the high amount by half and then by 2 thirds. These calculations are best case scenarios assuming no lag, no movement, and instant SS casts.

At the final tier haste level of 2825 it looks theoretically possible to get everything cast in 15 seconds, but it would be very tight and realistically unlikely. At lower haste levels it's pretty much impossible to get everything cast in 15 seconds. Thus lowering the impact of Fae Empowerment. I think increasing the duration to 20 seconds would make the timing more reasonable.

Both replying to Graylo and adding my own comments for now:

-------

It's not quite that bad--you don't have to DoT or SS right at the turn of the Eclipse (Starfall you probably still want to). You also have NG for the second half of the duration. Anyway, fine-grained stuff like this I'll look at when I get the bug for another spreadsheet update sometime before live.

Just on high-level stuff:
--Increasing Starsurge damage is good independently of everything else. It was really not interesting enough when both the DPET and energy gain were so similar to from ordinary nukes.
--Shooting Stars: Is this just balancing for having fewer DoT ticks than in Cata? I was kind of surprised to see a high proc rate along with the increased damage. We were always under impression that PVP spikes were the limiting factor that led to the SS nerfs in Cata, and I wouldn't want to get back to something that has to be nerfed the same way again.

Fae Empowerment:
Not sure about this. You're trading a GCD for a 15-20% boost to, best case, 6 nukes. That's a very, very thin profit margin, and lots of things cut into it:
--You aren't guaranteed 3 nukes before Eclipse due to Euphoria. There's 25% chance to lose one there.
--SS procs. Whether you hold SS and potentially waste procs (15s Fae duration is a long time to avoid SS), or cast it and lose buffed nukes like Graylo hinted at, this isn't working out as well in practice as it is on paper.
--Extending the Eclipse cycles by 2 GCD's eats into both NG and DoT efficiency (remember the discussion about the first Incarnation, and how valuable it winds up being to contract the Eclipse cycle).

I'll leave more detailed guesses for the sheet, but IIRC Ghostcrawler just recently made a comment on how adding DPS mechanics with very tiny paper gains often result in losses in practice. More to the point for now, there's no micro-level decision making here. The only time this has a chance of working is to just cast it 3 nukes before Eclipse and kind of see if everything works out. People will just put a little flag in their Eclipse addon, like we did in Cata to remind us to queue up the opposite nuke based on energy level.


Backing up a bit:
--In Cata beta when the Eclipse bar was put in, one of my feedback points was that the rotation was too rote. Between the new non-proc Eclipse and DoT refreshing, it was all mechanical with no reactivity. I remember specifically telling GC "this needs some kind of proc, like Warlocks' Molten Core or Mages' Hot Streak." And that's what wound up working, when Shooting Stars was added. I think that was good in Cata, the mechanical rotation with the buff that could make you push a certain button at any time.
--Since then, the only thing that's changed between Cata and MOP is that DoT's and Sfall are much more tied to the Eclipse cycle. Instead of watching the Eclipse bar, DoT durations, and cooldowns (Sfall, FoN) independently, now it's a mechanical process each Eclipse. Wrath Wrath Wrath, okay I'm one cast away from Eclipse, queue up Starfall, Moonfire, [Starsurge], Starfire. It's pretty close to just being able to /castsequence it with one seperate button for SS procs.

Getting into all these details to emphasize: that seems be the only big difference between Cata and MOP. So if you think the micro-level gameplay has dried up, it must be due to no longer having to separately plan out Eclipse turns and DoT refreshes (in addition to reaction to the SS flash). This version of Fae Empowerment, even if tuned more attractively, doesn't really address that, because it's another thing you simply cast in order.

Will think more about brainstorms (also, if I get back to thinking about all this, more likely I'll get the urge to update the spreadsheet sometime soon). But for now: maybe think about how intended it is for DoTs to go from being their own process (meant somewhat literally--their own mental thread), to a lockstep part of the Eclipse cycle.

Something worth noting about Fae Empowerment is that even if it's not worth casting in a no movement fight. It still becomes almost free damage if there's any movement at all as you can cast it on the run (thinking morchok black blood, yor'sahj run to bloods, zon'ozz run to adds, boat onslaught, and madness platform transitions) and very useful for any fight with a well defined burn phase (thinking spine or hagara [if you could time it off a shard]). I'd use it in almost every encounter except Ultra (even then, you could cast it as a last thing before you click your button). It may not be a buff to dummy damage but I'd still consider it a huge buff because almost all fights have at least some movement. It may not look very strong on paper but I see it as bonus damage you get from having to do mechanics. It'd be a lot more reliable than our limited toolkit on the move we currently have.